Re: [jboske] factivity of nu

[John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>]

And Rosta scripsit:

> Is the detective Sherlock Holmes less of a detective than the detective
> Alan Pinkerton [or some other RL detective]?

I think this question smells of essentialism, and I wish to reformulate
it as follows: Does the state of affairs "Sherlock Holmes detects" constitute
less of a *detection* than the state of affairs "Alan Pinkerton detects"?
To which I answer No.

> But all Nick meant was that "ro nu broda cu fasnu", i.e.
> "every nu-event happens". The "truly in the world" bit is just
> implicit in all nonintensional predicates. The disagreement is
> about whether nu should be allowed to be an intensional predicate,
> given that Lojban has no others.

I think that fasnu is something of a meta-predicate, which says about
events (construed as abstractions, not as points in space-time or the
like) that they belong to the real world or don't belong to it. Its role
are analogous to the role of ckaji, which is a meta-predicate saying whether
something has or doesn't have a certain property.

The property "\x.x is a unicorn" exists (that is, can be the value of a
quantified variable) independently of whether it se ckaji anything.
Just so, the event "Sherlock Holmes detects" can be the value of a quantified
variable independently of whether there is a Sherlock Holmes and whether,
if so, he detects.

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